Dickinson State University
Proctored Exam Guidelines
Online proctoring procedures:
 Instructors should post a notice on their syllabus along with an Announcement in their course notifying
students of proctored exams. This notice should include the Dickinson State Proctor Policy along with the
Student Proctor Form which is to be completed by the student.
 Proctor policy and forms:
o The Proctor Policy can be found at www.dsublue.com/faculty-resources/ under the Proctored Exams
section.
o The Student Proctor Form can be found at www.dsublue.com/proctorform/. The student should
submit the Student Proctor Form at least two weeks prior to taking the first exam.
 Upon receipt of the form, TREC will verify that the proctor meets the requirements within the DSU Proctor
Policy.
 In the event the proctor does not meet the guidelines, TREC will contact the student to let them know a
different proctor is needed.
 Accepted proctor forms are then uploaded into the DSU Proctor Information course shell in Moodle.
 It is the instructor’s responsibility to follow up with students who have not returned their proctor forms.
 At least one week prior to the exam opening date, the instructor must submit the Proctored Exam
Information Form, which can be found at www.dsublue.com/ped/.
 Two days prior to the exam, the Technical Support Specialist for TREC will send the exam details to the
approved proctors.
 Details will include:
o Course specific details sent to us by the instructor via the Proctored Exam Information Form.
Exam guidelines:
 Length of exams:
o For exams during the semester, a typical face-to-face course will have a 50 min-1 hour time frame,
please try to keep within that time frame in your online course as well.
o For final exams, please try to keep your exams within a comparable time frame as you would in a
face-to-face final exam. Final exams on campus are set on a two hour time frame; please try to
stay as close to that as possible.
o Please keep in mind exam lengths are also established to ease the scheduling of students
during peak proctored exam periods.

Time per question:
 To avoid students being rushed or unable to complete an exam, a general rule to consider is to allow 45
seconds to 1 minute and 30 seconds per question. For example:
 If it is a multiple choice question with only one sentence to read through and the options are
relatively short statements, 45 seconds would be plenty.
 However, in the case of an essay question with several sentences presenting more in depth
concepts requiring a more thought-out answer you would need to allow more time for the
student to respond.
 Mathematical questions requiring work to be shown may also require more time per question.

Number of days:
 Please keep in mind that several of the online students work many different shifts. Some work days
and some work evenings, while others may work every weekend or travel a lot during the week
 When you set the number of days your exam is available, try to have the exam available on
days that will cover some weekend time and weekday time to accommodate as many students
as possible.
 It is this type of flexibility that allows students to succeed in your online courses.
3/30/2015